Sanger's actual speech was not found.
In spite of the storm of opposition which has raged around the subject of birth control, remarkable progress is being made in the matter of education, according to Mrs. Margaret Sanger, outstanding champion of the movement in this country, who is a guest at the Ambassador.
“Prejudices are being broken down rapidly,” she said, “and while public opposition has died down to a large extent, unfortunately there still is much organized opposition. Education concerning the necessity for birth control is the basis of our whole problem and then we must have recognition of the movement by governments in order that birth control information will come under the jurisdiction and direction of qualified persons.
Poor women, for instance, must have places where they can go to receive scientific instruction."
“It is important that this movement should make progress, for I believe that civilization soon will be swamped if the birth-control movement fails. It is a fact that there is a larger percentage of incompetents being born now because there is alarger number of them reproducing.”
In this connection Mrs. Sanger said many of the countries of Europe are looking toward California with great interest to see what will be the results and effects of the State’s sterilization law, which is quite generally regarded, she asserts, as one of the greatest forward strides in legislation in the direction of humanitarianism.
Mrs. Sanger said it has been her experience when attending conferences of college students on the subject of birth control that mixed groups approach the subject from a purely scientific angle, with an utter lack of self-consciousness.
At the present time Mrs. Sanger's chief concern is the pssage of the Senate bill designed to amend the Comstock law which first came into existence about sixty yeas ago. Through the proposed amendment the United States mail or common carriers would be available for members of the medical profession to distribute information.
Mrs. Sanger's purpose in Los Angeles to to appear at the hearing on the estate of the late Mrs. Viola Kauffman, who, following her death last March, was to have left considerable money and securities hidden away, although she had been considered a pauper. In her will a bequest was left for Mrs. Sanger's cause.
Following her expeirences as a trained nurse in New York, Mrs. Sanger first bgan her crusade for the birth-control movement in 1916. In 1923 she established a clinic in New York, in which, since that time, 32,000 women have received instruction, she said. A large percentage of this number, she explained, have been young women in their twentie, who already are the others of four or five children."
The following is an excerpt from the hearings, including only Margaret Sanger's testimony and her direct responses.
New York City
Mrs. Sanger. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, first may I thank you in the name of our committee for your kindness and consideration in giving us so much of your valuable time this morning.
I also wish to assure you that were it not for our deep conviction that the bill we are trying to persuade you to enact into law, means so very much to millions of women in the country, we would not worry or trouble you to give us time at this particular period of mental distress, in the hurry of your own work.
This bill directly affects 25,000,000 married women of child-bearing age in this country. It indirectly affects the health and the future development and the education of 45,000,000 children in this country, of which 10,000,000 are handicapped, mentally or physically, according to the reports given at the White House conference called by President Hoover last year.
More than 1,400 experts reported that those 10,000,000 handicapped children were handicapped because of conditions of poverty, ignorance, or neglect. And yet, Mr. Chairman, no fundamental cure was offered to prevent the coming of 10,000,000 more children who will eventually be handicapped, from causes of ignorance, poverty, and neglect.
Because of the controversial nature of this subject, commonly known as birth control, I wish to tell you something about its general application.
This movement in its modern state began in this country in 1914. I myself, as a mother of 3 children, a member of a large family of 11, and a trained nurse, early came to the conclusion from my own experience in the slum districts of New York City, that this was one of the most vital factors in maternal health and in the health of children.
I found everywhere women who were seeking some means, some knowledge of what they could do to prevent the coming of other children whom they knew, owing to their physical defects, they were unable to bring into the world in a healthy condition; or, owing to their husband's economic circumstances, they would be unable to provide for.
So I began to wonder if we could not do something about this law, which was passed by Congress in 1873, nearly 60 years ago. With all the advance that women have made and with all the advance of our charities and our philanthropies and with all the billions that are spent upon disease and defects, delinquency, and dependency, we still allow-–in fact we almost force married persons who continue in their normal, marital lives, to bring into the world children for whom they themselves could not provide.
So, in order to stir up interest in this question and to get this law changed, it was necessary to organize public sentiment, which has now grown into the birth-control movement.
Birth control is the conscious control of the birth rate by means that prevent the conception of human life. We emphasize “prevent”; not interrupt, not destroy. It does not mean abortion. It does not mean the interruption of life after conception occurs. There is no more an interruption of life or a destruction of life in preventing conception than in remaining single or living in abstinence or celibacy. Physiologically speaking, there is no difference.
We say “control.” When we control, we do not have to limit any more than when you control your furnace you have to put the fire out. We control the furnace according to the heat that we desire to maintain in the home, according to the season, according to the hour of the day or night. You control your motor car, but you do not have to stop the engine.
So, in controlling the size of the family or controlling the birth rate, we control it in accordance with the mother's health, in consideration of the quality of inheritance that we are going to pass on to our children, in consideration of the father's income and his earning capacity.
This law, Mr. Chairman, was put upon the statute books at a time when there was very little recognition of the value of the practice of family limitation, when there was very little knowledge of the technique of contraception.
Birth control or prevention of contraception was classed in the obscenity clause with abortion, pornography, and indecency; and it does not belong there.
There was no exemption for physicians. There was no exemption for hospitals or dispensaries.
Mr. Chairman, when that law was passed, it practically closed the avenues of knowledge to the medical profession in this country; it closed out knowledge of research that has been going on in other countries.
It has left us, in so far as the control of child bearing is concerned, practically as in the days of barbarism or savagery. Furthermore, to all intents and purposes, the day that law was passed, women were placed into the category of child-bearing machines. Under this law they practically become conscript mothers.
President Hoover in his address before the White House conference said:
“Let no one believe that these are questions which should not stir a nation; that they are below the dignity of statesmen or government. If we could have but one generation of properly born, trained, educated, and healthy children, a thousand other problems of government would vanish. We would assure ourselves of healthier minds in more vigorous bodies to direct the energies of our Nation to yet greater heights of achievement. Moreover, one good community nurse will save a dozen future policemen.”
There are altogether seven very definite reasons-–perhaps more--but I shall take up only seven, why we claim that birth control should be practiced.
First. Wherever there is a transmissible disease, either the husband or wife suffering from insanity, feeblemindedness, epilepsy, or any other form of transmissible disease, neither of those persons should consider being a parent.
Second. In conditions where the mother or the woman has a temporary disease, such as tuberculosis or a heart or kidney disease, pelvic deformity, goiter, and various other conditions, pregnancy becomes a great hazard to the woman's life. We claim that mother should be protected by having contraceptive information so that she can regain her health before she takes upon herself the burden of pregnancy.
Third. Where parents though seemingly normal themselves, yet have already given birth to defective children, children with cleft palates, children that are subnormal, that are deaf and dumb, we claim that just for the good of the State those parents should refrain from further child bearing, even in spite of the great desire and hope for a normal child.
Fourth. Every mother should safeguard her health as well as that of her unborn child by spacing the births of children for a period of from two to three years.
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, the days are past when it was a very easy matter for women to give birth to children, as it was two or three generations ago. Today it is known that the whole organism of a woman's life, her nervous organism, is quite different from what it was in her grandmother's days, and child bearing is a greater hazard today than it ever was before. In many, many cases, it leaves her not only in a precarious condition at the time, but often in a damaged condition for the future.
We ask that she be able to recuperate from that ordeal, to take the time to enjoy her baby and to take the time to prepare herself physically and mentally and spiritually for the coming of the next child she may wish to have. That means a spacing from two to three years between children.
Doctor Woodbury, of the United States Children's Bureau, published some very interesting data where he clearly shows that too short an interval between childbirths markedly affects the infant death rate. Where the interval between births is three years, the infant death rate is 86.5 (per 1,000 births); when the interval is two years, the rate is 98.6; and when it is only one year, the infant mortality goes up to 146.7. Certainly a very striking increase.
Fifth. There are economic considerations. We believe that it is unfair, that it is not right, for people to have children for whom they cannot provide, and it is just as unfair for a man and a woman to have children that society or the community or their older children have to provide for as it is for one country to spill over the other country's border. It is just the same morally.
We know that in our work we have had women come to us who 10 years ago were unable to provide for 4 or 6 children and who today have 12 or 15 which the community has been providing for and taking care of.
Mr. Chairman, we found in our records that most of these children have to go out to work, have to compete with their father in the labor market just as soon as they get old enough to get a labor certificate from the community.
We claim that our young people, while they may marry, and it might be advisable for them to marry early, should wait until they are fully complete in their development, through the adolescent period, before they become parents. We believe it would do away with a great many questions of immorality, promiscuity, and various other questions that concern us all today if this were more encouraged on the part of society.
Sixth. The adolescent period must be considered. We are learning a great deal about the adolescent boy and girl. In the old days the Greeks advised their young men not to marry until their twenty-fifth year. There was something very important in that. Perhaps they did not know it scientifically, but today we know that a man does not become really a man until his twenty-fifth year and that the woman does not become a woman, she is a girl, practically, until after the twenty-third year.
This is illustrated by other findings of Doctor Woodbury. In homes, for instance, where the average number of persons per room is less than 1, the infant death rate is 52.1; where it is two or more per room, the death rate is 135.7. Furthermore, in families where the per capita income from the father's earnings was less than $50 the infant mortality rate was 215.9, as compared with a rate of only 60.5 where the per capita amount averaged $400 or over. These figures clearly and strikingly indicate the influence of family over-crowding upon family well being.
Seventh. Adjustment.-– A point on which many may disagree with us. I believe it is very important to our young people's future that they should take at least two or three years after marriage just to get acquainted. Marriage is more today than just a question of providing for children. When there is a fine companionship in marriage between men and women, a spiritual development results. We believe that if two people have a chance to get acquainted, a chance to adjust themselves mentally and spiritually and physically, before they become parents, we shall have happier homes, more permanent marriages, and eventually, when the fear of pregnancy is removed from the home,we shall have larger families. That is our belief, Mr. Chairman. We have seen it come true in the past 16 or 17 years since we have been advocating this idea.
There are three main methods of contraception or birth control.
The first is continence. There are no laws against it. Anyone who wishes to practice continence or to live in celibacy is legally free to do so. No one disagrees with their right to live in this way, if they wish.
The second is sterilization. There are 14 States in the Union today where there are sterilization laws. These provide for sterilization of certain types of persons who are morally irresponsible, who are able to bring into the world only progeny that will be a detriment to society.
The third is chemical or mechanical means of contraception around which most of this controversy is waged.
As you will see from this bill, we want the medical profession to direct the practice of contraception. We want no promiscuous distribution or scattering of knowledge of supplies as there has been in the past and there is today.
We want, for all time, to have this knowledge properly controlled and we believe that this bill provides for that. It places the responsibility of giving such information upon the medical profession. We have further found in the 28,000 cases that we have advised at the Clinical Research Bureau in the city of New York, which operates legally under the laws of the State of New York, which permit a physician to give information for the cure of prevention of disease, that knowledge of anatomy and physiology is necessary to instruct a woman properly according to her individual need. We have had 28,000 women who have come to us and who have been benefited by the advice given them, as their homes will show, as their children will show and as their own health will show.
We have found from these 28,000 cases, that every woman differs. You can no more claim that continence is the one and only method that should be practiced than you can say that every one should be sterilized. Every woman is different physiologically. Family conditions are different in each case and so it takes the trained physician with his knowledge of anatomy and physiology to advise that person, just as it takes a trained oculist to advise as to the proper fitting of eye glasses. We do not send our people to the 10-cent store nor to the corner druggist to get their supplies for contraception over the counter.
We want this thing to be put on a decent basis, to be handled in a scientific way. That is what we are asking.
This bill does not compel anyone to use such information. It does not compel any physician to give information. It simply permits contraceptive information and supplies to be sent to doctors or to hospitals and clinics from other countries and through the United States mails or by common carriers and permits supplies to be sent to druggists for use in their legitimate prescription business.
Many of you may say, “Well, is there not everything in this country that we may wish?” And I wish to say, “No.” There is a great deal of research going on in other countries, in Oxford and Cambridge in England, and in Edinburgh University in Scotland; a great deal of research is going on there which, according to the laws, can not come into this country.
I have here today a letter from the customs official of New York City saying that certain things were sent to me from Germany, two articles, that will be destroyed. I have sent a letter and asked that they be readdressed to the physician who is the medical director of our research bureau in New York City, stating that though they may articles to prevent conception, they also fulfill another function of preventing the spread of disease or protecting health. I asked that they be sent to one of our physicians. The answer was that they could not be sent to anyone and I would like to offer this letter, Mr. Chairman, if I may.
The Acting Chairman. You may put the letter in the record.
[The correspondence between Margaret Sanger and H. C. Stuart of the United State Customs Service was omitted.]
Mrs. Sanger. The law, section 305 (a) of the tariff act does not allow any article of that kind to come into this country, and we are thus denied the results of research. We are denying our medical profession the benefit of knowledge obtained in various other countries where a great deal has been going on in the way of research, where they are unlimited in their research. There are only two countries in the world that have laws such as ours and they were patterned after our laws, unfortunately. Those countries are France and Italy.
We have in this country nearly 100 clinics, birth-control clinics, that are legally operating in the various States. Forty-seven States allow the physician to protect the woman's health and to give contraceptive advice as he sees fit. At the same time these physicians, while they may give information orally, have to bootleg their supplies from New York or Chicago or some place where they are manufactured in order to do what they should to protect the health of the woman in their own State.
In the State of California, in Los Angeles, under the county medical department 11 birth-control clinics have been established. If I should write and tell a woman in Los Angeles where one of those clinics is, or send her the address or name of the director of those clinics, I subject myself to the possibility of five years' imprisonment and $5,000 fine under section 211; even to write her where she may go to obtain that information.
It is preposterous; it is absurd. This whole situation is preposterous. Our laws are tangled and confused and as long as they remain as they are on the books, the situation will continue to be as it is.
I myself have received over a million letters, a great majority of them from mothers. I am going to conclude by asking you if you will listen patiently to just a few of them, because I want to analyze them, to show you what the real condition is.
Here is one that says:
"I am the mother of 12 children, 6 of which are living. I have had 8 miscarriages in 20 years. I have been married and have a husband that does not support his family like he should. If you can and it is in your power, please tell me something to keep me from getting pregnant. I think I will die if I ever have another baby. So please help me if you can. And may God bless you as long as you live."
Now, that is a 50 per cent loss. That woman has had 12 children and only 6 of them are living. She has had 8 miscarriages. Think of the wasted time, think of the loss to that woman; think of the loss of the power of motherhood when we make this woman go through such a ghastly ordeal.
Here is another letter:
"I have six children, my youngest 2 months old, and I am just scared to death for fear I will get that way again, for I never can live to go through with it again. I came near dying this time. For three months before my baby was born, I could not get any shoes on my feet and I could hardly get my eyes open to see. I was bloated up so bad. The doctor wanted to take the baby away when I was 8 months, but I said no, I did not care if I lived or died and I did not have the least idea of living, but the Lord spared me probably so I could go through it all again. But I live on the banks of Lake Erie and just as sure as I get in a family way again I will end my troubles and be at rest. Now, if you can tell me of any way, I would bless your name forever."
That is another one. You can imagine that mother with that fear in her mind, with that sword hanging over her head.
I want to say, Mr. Chairman, that since this law was passed, 1,500,000 mothers have passed out into the great beyond from causes due to child bearing.
There is just one more that I want to read to you, because these are the women who are urging us to pass these laws to give them some relief from the evil condition from which they have been suffering.
"I just passed my 21st birthday August 5th (this year). I am already the mother of five little children, the oldest six years, and the baby three months. My husband has been out of work over a year and a half now. We would have starved to death long ago but for our relatives who, among them, gave us $5 a week. It's awful hard, Mrs. Sanger, to live like this, and my husband got so down and blue when he found I was that way last time, that he wanted to go away and live in another place, but his folks wouldn't let him do that. My children are well, thank God, but I'm awfully weak, only weighing 90 pounds. I do all the work, and if only I could get strong and not have any more babies, I'd take hope and so would my husband. Won't you help me, please? I know that God will bless you if you do."
One more. This is a classic:
"I am only 34 years old and have given birth to 12 children, only 3 of them living. They die so quickly after they are born, it seems they don't have strength to live long. My husband is a good hard-working man, but the best he ever made was $1.50, and never for long. We're poor people, Mrs. Sanger, and the coffins of the last two are not paid for yet. It's hard on a woman to see them go like that, and I think that if I did not have any for a while I could keep the three I've got and give them better than we had."
Is there any man in the world that would continue a business that shows a 75 per cent loss? Of course not. And yet these mothers are not only losing live babies, but they are interrupting pregnancies, thereby sapping their health and strength.
One woman is only 34 years old, the other is only 21. Can you see, gentlemen, what it means to look ahead? Can you see that these women have years and years ahead of them of child bearing, of hopelessness, of despair? Why, the very entrance of a smiling, loving husband is a terror to these woman. Is it any wonder that homes are broken up? Some of the speakers will tell you something about the attitude of men. The young husbands have their problems too. They are trapped. They do not know what it is all about. They do not know what to do. They do the best they can, and yet the only thing they can do when they find their wives in a pregnant condition, with their hopelessness for the future, is to abort. In many of our cases we have brought them back again so that we can teach the husband and wife that it is not necessary to continue to bring children into the world that they can not take care of, and we have made many of these homes happier by proper instruction.
These are the facts. These are the conditions; and there is just one thing that we must realize: The United States Government has already recognized that there is a population problem, at least as far as the quality is concerned, for you know that the Government has claimed the right to exclude immigrants whose condition is likely to be a serious danger to the well-being and happiness of the country. A very important law was passed, and there are now excluded by the immigration act of February 5, 1917 (39 Stat. 874), regulating immigration of aliens to and residence of aliens in the United States, which reads as follows:
Sec. 3. That the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission into the United States: All idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons; persons who have had one or more attacks of insanity at any time previously; persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority; persons with chronic alcoholism; paupers; professional beggars; vagrants; persons afflicted with tuberculosis in any form or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; persons not comprehended within any of the foregoing excluded classes who are found to be and are certified by the examining surgeon as being mentally or physically defective, such physical defect being of a nature which may affect the ability of such alien to earn a living; persons who have been convicted of or admit to having committed a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude; polygamists, or persons who practice polygamy or believe in or advocate the practice of polygamy; prostitutes, or persons coming into the United States for the purpose of prostitution or for any other immoral purpose; persons who directly or indirectly procure or attempt to procure or import prostitutes or persons for the purpose of prostitution or for any other immoral purpose; persons who are supported by or receive in whole or in part the proceeds of prostitution; persons likely to become a public charge.
There are also provisions for the exclusion of illiterates, or of persons 16 years of age, physically capable of reading, but who cannot read English or some other language. All are refused admission into the United States of America.
Mr. Chairman, I think it is a good law, and all that we are asking is, that if such persons and such types are not good for the country, to come in from the outside, that they also, by birth control, be prevented from coming into the world. If these types are not good for a country, and are a source of danger to our well-being and happiness, then I say, shall we not have the right to have these types of persons in this country excluded from birth?
I thank you.
The Acting Chairman. Are there any questions?
Mr. McCormack. Mrs. Sanger, I was rather interested in your statement that you think a married couple should wait two or three years just to get acquainted after marriage. What did you mean by that--a probationary marriage or trial marriage? I think you ought to explain that.
Mrs. Sanger. No; I mean a permanent marriage. I think marriages would be more permanent if there were a proper adjustment and opportunity for getting acquainted at the beginning.
Mr. McCormack. Suppose they do not become acquainted?
Mrs. Sanger. Of course we are going to give them a better chance to become acquainted; far better than they have today. If I may just digress a moment, what opportunity is there for young people to get acquainted? In the first year after marriage a woman's whole physiological condition is changed. There may be some opportunity for the man--he does not have to have his whole physiological condition changed, but for the woman who comes back from her honeymoon with headaches, morning nausea, and a new nervous strain-–not only is marriage a new condition for her, but the process and the possibility of motherhood entirely changes her whole being.
Now, I say that those young people have not the first chance to get really acquainted. The man never knows his wife as a woman. He only knows her as a girl before marriage, and then he knows her as preparing for motherhood. I say it is unfair to the relationship of marriage. It is unfair to the child that is about to be born, and we know that it makes a great difference, and that marriage can be more permanent if there is the opportunity to become adjusted.
Mr. McCormack. You made reference to some statements made by President Hoover. Did you intend thereby--I am sure you did not, but I would like to have it in the record one way or the other--did you intend thereby to let the inference be drawn that he was supporting this movement?
Mrs. Sanger. Not at all. I simply made a statement that he believes in a healthier childhood, and that children should be given the opportunity to be born well.
Mr. McCormack. Continence is the exercise of the affirmative mind, is it not?
Mrs. Sanger. Not always.
Mr. McCormack. What was that conference at which President Hoover made that statement?
Mrs. Sanger. The White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, in 1931.
Mr. McCormack. Continence is the exercise of the affirmative mind by the individual; that is true, is it not?
Mrs. Sanger. Not always the affirmative mind. It may be an exercise of a negative mind.
Mr. McCormack. But in an affirmative direction?
Mrs. Sanger. Not altogether. I think it is negative just as it is affirmative. It is denial.
Mr. McCormack. Well, denial. It has to be an exercise of an affirmative mind to deny themselves something that their inclination desires, does it not?
Mrs. Sanger. Well, it is a denial of a positive function, I should say.
Mr. McCormack. Now, as to the chemical means of contraception, what is meant by drugs, or the use of drugs?I notice this bill says:
"Any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing that may be used for the prevention of conception."
What kind of drugs do you have in mind?
Mrs. Sanger. Chinosol, quinine, and various other things that may form a suppository which will kill the spermatozoa.
Mr. McCormack. What kind of instruments has this bill in mind?
Mrs. Sanger. Condoms and pessaries of various kinds.
Mr. McCormack. Of course, the purpose of those is for use prior, with the purpose of preventing conception?
Mrs. Sanger. Absolutely; no interference afterwards.
Mr. McCormack. In other words, it is a means of affording self-satisfaction and preventing the consequences thereof by the use of artificial means?
Mrs. Sanger. If you wish to put it that way.
Mr. Canfield. Mrs. Sanger, in your statement you referred to “this law.” Which law do you refer to?
Mrs. Sanger. Sections 211, 245, and 312 of the Criminal Code and section 305 of the tariff law.
Mr. Canfield. Is that the Comstock law which Congressman Hancock referred to?
Mrs. Sanger. Yes. They were enacted by Congress at the instigation of Mr. Comstock in 1873.
The Acting Chairman. We thank you, Mrs. Sanger, for your presence and your contribution to the hearings.
[The material submitted by Mrs. Sanger was omitted by the editors.]
Further Statement of Mrs. Margaret Sanger
Mrs. Sanger. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I wish it had been possible, without going into the personalities, to take a vote and to have shown the number of children born to and reared by those who appeared for and against this bill. It would be amusing were it not tragic in its significance to see a childless woman who is a Member of Congress appear here against this bill when she herself, were she obeying the laws of nature, would probably be at home attending to her 10 or 12 children.
I have found in the arguments presented here that it as been a case of personal opinion against facts, theories against practical knowledge.
For instance, I can illustrate that with some of the remarks made by Dr. Howard Kelly. When he was asked about contraceptives he mentioned the use of a douche as a contraceptive. Why, everybody knows--everybody who knows anything at all about this subject--that a douche is not a contraceptive but a cleansing agent, used more for hygienic purposes than for contraception. It is an old fogey theory that a douche is a contraceptive. It means simply that Doctor Kelly has not been in school in the last 20 or 30 years, where he might have learned something of the modern technique of contraception.
That is a case illustrative of the point I wish to make, the opponents of this bill do not know the facts. Here is a man like Doctor Kelly who has made his reputation in medicine, through long years of great achievement, coming here and talking not on the merits of the bill, but on a defense of “morals.” That is amusing, particularly when taken in conjunction with the statement of Dr. John Ryan, who is a theologian, a representative of the Catholic Church, who comes to theorize on economics and the population aspect of this question.
That is all very right and proper. They may express their opinions, but, Mr. Chairman, the merits of the bill have not been discussed by the opponents of the bill.
As a matter of fact, when you weed out the personal opinions expressed, no one has said that the physician should not have the right to use the United States mails and common carriers. No one has dared to say that the physician has not the right to give contraceptive information where he sees that it is right and where he sees that a woman really needs it.
That is the sum and substance of what this is all about.
Canon Chase made a statement for which I think he owes and apology to the Federal committee, when he said that this is a “crook's bill.” I am not going to take the time to refute these stupid, senseless, futile, personal accusations. I want to say that he did say one good thing. He said, “No sensible person can oppose giving the trustworthy physician freedom to do what is necessary to protect the lives of women which would be endangered by another pregnancy if their husbands can not control themselves.”
I thank him for that statement.
Some people have said here that this bill would infringe upon State rights. That is not true. We included a statement in the proceedings yesterday to show that there are 47 States that give the physician the right to give information on the prevention of conception. About 24 States do not classify the prevention of conception in the obscenity laws at all. That is, there are 24 States where any one could give information. We are trying to direct public opinion so that it shall look to the physician to get such information and we are trying to make it possible for the physician to have the best information to give. There is only one State where there is any doubt about it.
Mr. Canfield. What State is that?
Mrs. Sanger. Mississippi. This bill does not open the mails to promiscuous distributions so that anyone can have information. It simply asks that the physician shall have the right of the United States mails and the common carriers, and that licensed clinics and the hospitals shall have the same right.
Mr. Chairman, I do not know whether the bill as it has been amended has been offered or not. Mr. Hancock made some changes.
The Acting Chairman. Those changes are a part of this testimony and as the committee considers this measure they will consider all that has been said with reference to it.
Mrs. Sanger. I want to say that the physician will not use the United States mails to advise or prescribe for patients. Let me try to make that clear to you. Every physician who knows his job at all will see the patient, will study the indications. He will advise her as to her personal needs and personal requirements. He will take into consideration not only her health but her whole gynecological formation and condition. He will take into consideration her economic situation, and he will advise her then, and that will come under the State law. But before he can advise he must have information, he must know what is available in the world in this regard. The medical schools of the past have not given this knowledge to him.
Not only shall the doctor advise the patient orally, but he must then give her a prescription by which she can get the articles recommended. That is why he must use the United States mail.
In many cases he himself will give her the article or device and in some cases he will give her a prescription for the drug store.
In my estimation this is the only way that the present promiscuous scattering of information and devices can be corrected. I consider this the sanest way of trying to correct the misuse of knowledge or misinformation that has been and still is so prevalent throughout the country and which both proponents and opponents deplore.
There are 150,000 physicians in the United States who belong to the American Medical Association. There is some difference of opinion among them. The American Medical Association as a whole has never gone on record for or against this measure, but a few years ago the section on obstetrics and gynecology and abdominal surgery did go on record by a resolution to the effect that they recommended “the alteration of existing laws whenever necessary so that physicians my legally give contraceptive information to their patients in the regular course of their practice.” That resolution, Mr. Chairman, was submitted in record yesterday and is printed elsewhere in full.
To give you a brief idea of how the medical profession regards this question, I shall cite from a questionnaire sent out by the Medical Journal and Record in 1927. Two hundred and seventy-three doctors replied and out of the 273, 248 were in favor of birth control or proper legislation leading thereto; 19 were against; 2 of them said they were unable to express an opinion. One said that he thought that contraceptive methods would be abused. One said that methods shall be advised only after consultation with a physician, with the sanction of the United States Government, and the Bible; and one thought that this generation knows too much about such things, and that the poor would not avail themselves of this information.
Those in favor represent a pretty large proportion of the number that expressed themselves in this symposium.
Following that up, the Medical Journal and Record in 1929 sent out another questionnaire, and 118 doctors replied to that, of which number 99 said that they were in favor and only four said that they were not informed sufficiently to express an opinion. Fifteen were opposed.
I just mention this to show you that there is a division of opinion, but there is a very much larger number of physicians who are for this than are against it.
Evidence was presented yesterday of the large number of county and city medical organizations in favor of this particular legislation and also of many who are in favor of the principles of birth control.
Two ex-presidents of the American Medical Association have made statements in our favor--Dr. Abraham Jacobi and Dr. Allen Pusey.
It has been stated that contraceptive measures or practices left a harmful effect upon the pelvic organs upon the nervous system of those who practiced it.
Again these statements are made by people who have an opinion but who have not the facts. We have the facts. We have been following up cases not only in New York but throughout the country where there are a hundred or more clinics. There have been 28,000 patients in one clinic in New York, the Birth Control Clinic Research Bureau, whose case records reveal facts to the contrary. We have had the patients come back to us, and we have a detailed study and analysis made of the first 10,000 of those cases, a record which is too voluminous to bring here today; but we have the actual facts from which to substantiate our conclusions.
I am going to ask, Mr. Chairman, if I may, to present one case that I took at random as an illustration.
An Italian woman, 29 years old on first visit (married at 15 years). Diagnosed as “high-grade moron” with husband classified as “mental case.” Three children, youngest an infant; two miscarriages, both due to overwork. Five pregnancies in all. Clinical contraceptive advice now successful for four years. This family able to carry on without help from social agency by whom she was referred to us.
It seems to me that that tells something of what the actual practice of contraception can do; how it will relieve the tremendous and growing burdens of charity now resting on society.
Here is a report by Dr. Lily C. Butler, medical officer of the Walworth Woman's Welfare Center, presented before the Seventh International Birth Control Conference held last September in Zurich, which reads as follows:
"So much is stated by opponents of birth control as to contraceptives subsequently producing sterility that the figures we have obtained on going through our cards at Walworth and East London are interesting. We note that 101 patients have wanted another child after periods varying from one to five years, and in 98 of these cases they have become pregnant on discontinuing the use of the contraceptive."
That shows that when proper means are applied to protect the individual woman there is no question that it is helpful to her and that it does not make her sterile.
To answer Mrs. Norton's challenge regarding my statement that 1,500,000 women have died from causes due to childbearing since this Comstock law was passed, I wish to state that this estimate was based on the figures of the United States Census Bureau, Department of Vital Statistics.
I wish to refute directly one other statement made by Mrs. Norton. In a reference to the sale of contraceptives, Mrs. Norton used the words “commercially profitable to their advocates.” Never have I, nor to my knowledge have any members of the committee, of which I am the national chairman, been interested in contraceptives for commercial profit. Mrs. Norton has seen fit to say that several of the statements made by me and other witnesses appearing for this bill were not supported by fact. I wish to say the same regarding her statement which I have quoted.
There is one other phase of this matter that is rather amusing. I think it was briefly stated yesterday that the geniuses, the flower of the family usually came at the end of a long line of children in large families.
I have here a study of over 700 persons of personalities who have come down to us through history.
I will mention these briefly, and then if I may, I will put this list in the record.
Acting Chairman. You have that permission.
Mrs. Sanger. Ninety-six of these were the only child; 204 were the first child; 113 were the second; 64 were the third; 50 were the fourth; 43 were the fifth. This goes right on down until you get to the eighteenth and nineteenth. John Wesley was the fifteenth and Caruso was the eighteenth, but a pitiful number of the other children in these families had died in infancy.
There are only two or three among those men and women who can be classified as “great” who were born late in the family's life, while those that were second or third make up a much larger portion.
Insert Genius Study pdf
The further we look into these things, Mr. Chairman, the more there is to be said for the care and the consideration that parents can give to 1 or 2 children or 3 or 4 children according to their means, according to their health. Further evidence is found in the Bible:
Isaac, in whose seed all the nations were to be blessed, was an only child, born after long years of preparation. Sarah, his mother, was a beautiful, talented woman, whose counsel was highly valued. Isaac's only children were twins-– Jacob, the father of all of Israel, and Esau. Isaac's wife, Rebecca, was also a lovely woman of fine character, whose opinion was sought and valued. Joseph, the child of Rachel, was born late in her life, and she had but one other child. Samuel, who judged Israel for 40 years, was an only child, born after years of prayer and supplication on the part of Hannah. John the Baptist was an only child and his parents were well along in years when he was born.
Jesus was the first born of Joseph and Mary and had no children.
So that even on the question of the place of great men in the family, our position is much stronger than that of our opponents.
Mr. Chairman, I want to yield the rest of my time to Doctor Meyer, because of the statement that has been made by the opponents with regard to the question of continence. Continence, Mr. Chairman, is something on which there has been recent study by a large group of medical men. They have come to know something about continence and its effects upon the human being and I now ask Dr. Adolf Meyer, professor of psychiatry in Johns Hopkins University, to take up that part of our presentation.
Mr. McCormack. Mr. Chairman, if Mrs. Sanger is yielding to Doctor Meyer because of the limitation of time, I ask unanimous consent that she be given an additional five minutes.
Mrs. Sanger. Thank you, Mr. McCormack, but I think I have finished my statement and I would rather the committee heard Doctor Meyer.
The Acting Chairman. Thank you, Mrs. Sanger, for your statement. We shall be pleased to hear Doctor Meyer.
The statement by Dr. Adolf Meyer was omitted by the MSPP editors.
Sanger's actual speech was not found.
In spite of the storm of opposition which has raged around the subject of birth control, remarkable progress is being made in the matter of education, according to Mrs. Margaret Sanger, outstaanding champion of the movement in this country, who is a guest at the Ambassador.
“Prejudices are being broken down rapidly,” she said, “and while public opposition has died down to a large extent, unfortunately there still is much organized opposition. Education concerning the necessity for birth control is the basis of our whole problem and then we must have recognition of the movement by governments in order that birth control information will come under the jurisdiction and direction of qualified persons.
Poor women, for instance, must have places where they can go to receive scientific instruction."
“It is important that this movement should make progress, for I believe that civilization soon will be swamped if the birth-control movement fails. It is a fact that there is a larger percentage of incompetents being born now because there is a larger number of them reproducing.”
In this connection Mrs. Sanger said many of the countries of Europe are looking toward California with great interest to see what will be the results and effects of the State’s sterilization law, which is quite generally regarded, she asserts, as one of the greatest forward strides in legislation in the direction of humanitarianism.
Mrs. Sanger said it has been her experience when attending conferences of college students on the subject of birth control that mixed groups approach the subject from a purely scientific angle, with an utter lack of self-consciousness.
At the present time Mrs. Sanger's chief concern is the pssage of the Senate bill designed to amend the Comstock law which first came into existence about sixty yeas ago. Through the proposed amendment the United States mail or common carriers would be available for members of the medical profession to distribute information.
Mrs. Sanger's purpose in Los Angeles to to appear at the hearing on the estate of the late Mrs. Viola Kauffman, who, following her death last March, was to have left considerable money and securities hidden away, although she had been considered a pauper. In her will a bequest was left for Mrs. Sanger's cause.
Following bher expeirences as a trained nurse in New York, Mrs. Sanger first bgan her crusade for the birth-control movement i 1916. In 1923 she established a clinic in New York, in which, since that time, 32,000 women have received instruction, she said. A large percentage of this number, she explained, have been young women in their twentie, who already are the others of four or five children."
Speech delivered at Auditorium Theater, Oakland, California on December 19th 1928. Handwritten additions are by Margaret Sanger.
It was Victor Hugo who said there was no force in the world so great as that of an idea whose hour had come. Some of` us believe that the hour for Birth Control has come. There are very few subjects of so which have so large a practical a significance which go cut so deeply into the foundations of social welfare evolution as Birth Control. There are few other subjects that have been left so long in obscurity while, at the same time, there are few that can so demonstrate their importance as Birth Control has done in the past few years.
George Bernard Shaw said that Birth Control is the most revolutionary idea of the twentieth century. H. G. Wells says it is the most momentous fact of modern living. I claim that Birth Control is a the keynote of a new moral responsibility, a new social awakening. It is not only a health and economic safeguard expedient but a great social expedient principle interlocked with the spiritual progress of the human race & its future.
To define Birth Control, we say it is the conscious control of the birth-rate by s not mean to interfere. It does not mean to destroy. There is no more interference with life through birth control than there is to remain unmarried or to live a celibate life. We also say “to control.” Control does not mean that you limit. When you control your furnace you do not have to put the fire out. When you control your motor you do not necessarily stop your car. To control the birth rate means that there shall be the same right for those who do not wish to have children as for those who do wish to have them. There are no objections to those who wish to increase the size of their families, but on the other side there seems to be a great deal of question and controversy as to the right of those who wish to limit or control the number of their children. Why, they say, should there be any necessity to control or limit population in this great land and especially out here in the west where there are so many large spaces acresof unused territory.
Civilization is confronted with two problems--pressure of population on the food supply of the world and the reconciling of humanitarian efforts with the greatest improvement of the race improvement. I believe birth control is the key to both. Statistics tell us that from fifteen to twenty millions of persons are born in this country world every year. That means fifty thousand a day. Certainly we must believe that something must should be done with this enormous group increase of new population. It must be controlled. There are only two ways of controlling it. INCREASING the death rate or DECREASING the birth rate. Which shall it be? History records the fact that population has always been kept down by war, by famine, by disease by floods and pestilence. Nature is most ruthless in extermination; she crushes to the wall the old, the sick, the demented, the diseased, the inefficient, and through these means was is able to perfect her type. But civilization today will no longer permit those methods to operate. With the hand of charity and philanthropy, democracy and Christianity, we reach out and grapple with Nature. We take to ourselves these inefficient, demented, or feeble-minded persons and we tax the normal, the fit and the healthy members of the population for their care. Through these methods we are bringing civilization to a queer pass. William Sanger Starr Meyer of Princeton University tells us that out of our one 105,000,000 hundred and twenty five million people, only twenty million can be classified as intellectual. From the 85 million thru psychological, biological and other tests it is found that 45-million are sub-normal, with intellects equal to juveniles of fifteen years; fifteen million were definitely feeble-minded, with eight year old minds; while 25-million could at best be classified as mediocre. Of course we all hope that we belong to the 20-million class. It is that enormous group of feeble-minded that gives concern to those of us who are socially minded.
Many of us remember the two famous families, the Kallikaks and the Jukes. The first started by a feeble-minded man marrying a normal woman. We know that two feeble-minded persons have never been known to bring to birth a normal child, but here we started with a normal woman. 470 of their descendants were normal: 143 were feeble-minded: 36 were illegitimate; three were epileptics: 83 died in infancy: three were criminals and twenty-four died in houses of ill fame.
The Jukes family had 1200 descendants; of these 130 were professional paupers; 135 were common criminals; 70 were thieves; the expense of maintaining this family was $1,300,000--and that too, was in the days when we did not have to count the high cost of living. Today we know for a fact that the high proportion of feeble-minded in our population is one of the great problems of civilization.
All over the country we find that institutions are not numerous enough or large enough to take care of our feeble-minded population. California has been one of the few States advanced enough to take hold of this question and try to solve it through sterilization. Reckoning three children for each feeble-minded couple, out of six thousand sterilized, California has saved herself eighteen thousand feeble minded persons.
It is not sufficient to take only the feeble-minded who are in institutions; only a small proportion of them are there. Millions live with us--with no regard whatever for the coming race. They continue to make our problems and to bring numerous children into the world.
Our insane question is almost as serious. In New York State a few years ago there was a great deal of pride on the part of the Governor and Legislature because they came before the public and said they had been able to appropriate the sum of twenty-five million dollars for the care of the insane. No one seemed to ask what they were doing to decrease the numbers of the insane. New York has, and I presume California also, the practice of allowing inmates of asylums suffering from certain types of insanity to return home periodically on what is called the parole system. A man confined in an asylum after for a certain period of time is allowed to return to his family on certain occasions; also a mother or woman. There is no responsibility on the part of the State to see that anything is done, or any knowledge given to that inmate or his family to see that children do not come from that individual.
We have had many cases where women, having been informed that the husband is returning, have come to our social agencies and begged that something should be done, often stating they already have two or three feeble-minded children or idiots. Often the women in these families are the bread-winner and she has begged the organizations, who are there to protect motherhood, to do something about this problem. In no case, in New York city, have I known that these women were ever helped in a fundamental way. They have been told not to worry, have been cheered as much as they could be cheered, and told that when such a condition arose they could come to the pre-natal clinic and care given them--and that is all. That seems to me a very short-sighted policy on the part of the social agencies and other groups, well-meaning, no doubt, but nevertheless very sentimental.
Not only the feeble-minded and insane deserve consideration. There are two groups of people in the world--not only in the United States but in almost all large cities of the civilized world. One group is what I term the small family group; the other is the large family group. When you look at the small family group you will see they have by far the best of it. It is there we find health, wealth, culture, education, intelligence. It is where there are few children, well spaced, that those few are brought up to full maturity. The children of this group are not sent to factories but to school, because of the desire of the parents to give them the best opportunities. They go to high school, to colleges, to universities. It is from this group that the best positions in the community are usually filled. It is from this group that those who desire to see large populations desire they should come.
On the other hand is the large family group; it has a hard time. You find there poverty. Poverty and large families almost always go hand in hand. You find mothers bearing children far too frequently, without regard to her health or the father’s earning capacity. It is there we find slums, overcrowding, not only in homes but in the community. We find there, too, terrible infant and maternal mortality, ignorance, disease, unemployment, child labor, and all the problems we are trying today to solve.
I know this group fairly well and I know the mothers here are not desirous of frequent child-bearing any more than the mothers of the other group. But seek and ask where they will there is no way for them to get advice or instruction on how to control the size of their families. All agencies are turned against them; they must turn to the interrupted pregnancy or bring unwanted children into the world year in and year out.
We are known in America to be a very generous hearted people; we are known throughout the world as being very large spenders. We have in the past ten years spent NINE BILLION DOLLARS on what are called the four D’s--DISEASE: DEFECTS: DELINQUENCY: DEPENDENCY. I have no quarrel even with that enormous amount if we could only be assured that it was not going to increase the next year and the following year. But we have no such assurance. In fact, judging by the past ten years, we have no reason to believe anything, except that we will be paying, not nine or ten but perhaps fifteen billion dollars to take care of the four D’s in the next ten years.
Will all you who are interested in social work follow me for a moment to see how we really attack one or two of these questions.
Take Maternal Mortality. It is really a disgrace that this country, which has so many splendid social organizations and institutions, should yet have its maternal mortality increased during the last few years. Twenty thousand mothers passed out from causes due to pregnancy during the past year. Twenty thousand mothers means two mothers for every hour, night and day. We know that tubercular women, or women with heart or kidney trouble should never be allowed to take the risk of motherhood. We know, too, that even tubercular women die, not from tuberculosis but from pregnancy. We know that the medical profession has every right, legally and morally, to interrupt that condition. Then what? They send her back to her home, to face the same conditions, in utter ignorance and with a death sentence hanging over her head.
With Infant Mortality we have done better. It is today I believe down to two hundred thousand infants who died before reaching their first birthday. We have reduced it but oh, at such a cost, not only in money but a whole group of individuals have devoted the best part of their lives to keeping alive children who never should have been born.
We do everything to keep our children alive but in most cases it is like locking the door after the horse is stolen. We have our Milk Stations, our Maternity Centers; we have Nurseries; we send nurses into the homes to tell the mothers of eight or nine children how to have their tenth child. What those mothers really want to know is how not to have that tenth or eleventh baby. Worst of all, we allow the 200,000 mothers and fathers of these children to remain in ignorance of how to prevent the birth of two hundred thousand children next year.
The Children’s Bureau of the Labor Dept. at Washington throws a light on the infant mortality of this country by telling us that the father’s wage has much to do with it. As his wage goes down, his family goes up. They also tell us that the spacing of children in the family has much to do with infant death; if there is an interval of two, three or four years that child has a better chance to live. They tell us also that number of children in the family has much to do with infant mortality and that the second child has a much better chance to live than the tenth or twelfth. For every second child born there is less than 100 deaths per thousand; for the fifth child, about 350; for the twelfth it is 600 out of every thousand. Sixty per cent of twelfth children born do not live to see their first birthday. What useless waste of womanhood and motherhood. What an orgy of agony!
I maintain that if we are ever going to do anything about infant mortality we have got to stop the unending stream of unwanted babies. We cannot sweep back the tide with the broom of organized charity or palliative legislation. We have to stop it at the source by safe and sound information to control birth.
Another question concerns us. Child labor. Most of us believe there is no such thing. We think children are protected by the laws of this country from work. But that is not true. For fifty years the Child Labor Commission has been trying to do away with Child Labor. They have not been successful. There are seven million children under 14 years of age who are engaged in gainful occupations. Have any of you seen children in the Southern mills going to work before the sun is up and returning after sunset? If you knew the conditions where these children are, you would know they are doomed to it. Fathers in many cases remain at home, doing much of the housework because he cannot get an adult man’s pay. Little ones of 6 or 7 are standing on boxes or benches because the machinery was made for their parents; here you find these little ones crowding so closely into the family that it is absolutely necessary for each of them as soon as they can to get out and compete with father and mother just for their daily existence. The same applies to children toiling in the fields, for instance, of Colorado. I went myself into the wheat fields of Colorado and it was astounding to me that we cannot have a little more fundamental attitude toward child labor; children of three and four were crawling on the ground like animals, putting fruit into baskets, their little backs permanently bent. To look into the faces of the parents of these twelve or fifteen children was to know that they were not capable of taking care of themselves, to say nothing of a large family,--which should never have been brought into the world. I’d like to see the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children begin a little further back and prevent the cruelty of children being born in misery and disease. I should like to see the time when the United States Government would have to guarantee a passport of health for every child born in this country.
If we could imagine it I think the children would like to take a look at their parents before being born and to ask them a few questions. If parents had to apply for children as they do for cooks and chauffeurs, the children might ask them for their health certificate. They might say: “What is the idea of having me? How do you live? What kind of table do you set? What are your plans for bringing me up? Am I to spend my childhood in a factory or a playground?” It might even say: “Ah, Mr. Father, I am a potential genius: what do you know about the development of a genius? What kind of society have you constructed for my gifts to adorn?” It might ask how many children there were already and if the answer was eight in two rooms and on twenty dollars a week, we can fancy it would say “I’ll stay where I am” and interview the next applicant.
The Government is concerned about the kind of people who come here from outside. Up to 1914 Uncle Sam was rather negligent about the kind of folk who emigrated here; he was like the parents who, although they scarcely know what they will do if their family is increased, yet do nothing to prevent it. Not until 1914 did the U.S. Government do anything much. We did not encourage emigration but did nothing to stop it. Not until 1924 was it necessary to recognize that there was a population problem and that SOMETHING must be done for the future of the country. So bars were put up at the entrance of the United States. Let me read you what the Government thinks likely to be a menace and source of disease to her people, to the happiness and well-being of her population. Feeble-minded persons, epileptics, idiots, imbeciles, insane people, tubercular, those with any loathsome or contagious disease, paupers, professional beggars, those likely to become a public charge, criminals, prostitutes, or for purposes of prostitution in any form; illiterates, those over 16 years unable to read English or any other language--all are refused admission and procedure for the enforcement of these measures is mandatory. I think it is good legislation. Unfortunately it is merely negative and not selective legislation.
If it is necessary to keep such types out of the country why is it not just as important to stop their breeding? it seems to me a very short-sighted procedure to make laws to keep them out and laws that increase and multiply them within. Immigration throughout the world is causing a good deal of stir; the countries of Europe have looked upon America for years as the solution of their problems. There is a good deal of bitterness at the United States taking this attitude and concern as to what they shall do. Europe claims that she has sent into the United States some of her best stocks, equipped us with artisans, with man made ready material. She claims she has depleted her own stocks by so doing, also that in order to do this in the past she has now made an enemy and a rival more powerful than all Europe combined. Many of the countries, like England, are trying to solve their over-population problem by sending them into the Colonies; but the Colonies in turn say they cannot use the slum population which England wants to get rid of; they must have men of health, vigor and initiative--so say New Zealand, Australia and Canada. The slum population England has sent has been sent back and England today has over a million unemployed. I am glad to say nevertheless that the British Government has been thinking seriously about the birth control; two years ago the House of Lords went on record and passed a resolution asking the Government to instruct mothers throughout the British Empire in methods of contraception at Infant Welfare Stations. It is an astounding thing that it was the Labor Party that refused to endorse that legislation.
Germany has also attempted to attack this question. When I was in Berlin I was astonished to find there was legislation going on, backed up by aggressive organization both labor and medical, as well as women's organizations, trying to terminate pregnancy, up to the third month. They have already endorsed sterilization. Women interrupted pregnancy and then remained to be sterilized. Out of 80 women who came, 75 remained, asking to be sterilized. These women had already had two or more children. In almost all cases something was wrong with their health of the mother, heart, kidneys or other troubles. Sterilization on a large scale is taking place in Germany. I consider that rather harsh and there may be some regret later on but nevertheless Germany is face to face with the problem of the future and she feels that is the only emergency she can at present attack.
Italy is making a great deal of increasing population. Mussolini has said: No babies, no votes. I do not know that the women particularly mind that; they might retort: No votes, no babies. I think Mussolini needs babies more than the women need votes. Italy is over-crowded. Everyone in Europe knows that. Italy cannot take care of her own population. Just two years ago six hundred thousand Italians and sixty thousand Poles went into France--and France herself has begun to consider population and immigration, as we have the last ten years. Anyone can go into France regardless of their condition. Not even today does France bar out of her country even persons with a transmissible disease. I think only one is not admitted--traucoma.
Japan has seven or eight hundred thousand new souls born every year. Crowded into a territory the size of California is a population equal to half of our population. All countries, except South America, have put up the bars against the Japanese. South America alone has the open door for Japan’s surplus population. Japan, to me, is like the chick inside the shell. Something has got to happen. As we all know, expansive populations of the world have caused wars over and over again. The economists of Europe are convinced that the peace of the world can never be solved until each country takes up the question of population. Until this is solved intelligently they may as well throw their peace treaties in the waste basket. This question of birth control is not only an individual, a national, and a racial problem but international. Many people believe that we who advocate birth control do not believe in having any children at all. It is not necessary to deny that to this audience; you know it is not true. Nevertheless, there are conditions in which it would be better for children not to be born at all. I maintain there are seven conditions under which children should never be born.
First: Not of parents with a transmissible disease; with insanity, feeble-mindedness, syphilis or epilepsy.
Second: Not of mothers with heart or kidney disease, until such disease is cured.
Third: Not of parents who already have a sub-normal child.
Fourth: I claim there should be an interval of two to three years between children. The mother should have an opportunity to recover from the ordeal of one birth, to enjoy her new baby and a period of time to prepare herself mentally and physically for the coming of the next child.
Fifth: No woman should have children until she has finished her adolescent period, from 14 to 23 years. While we all know many fine children born of young mothers I maintain that is no longer necessary. There should be an ideal time for parenthood and that should be at the close of the adolescent period, when the physical, nervous and mental organism is developed but not yet interlocked.
Sixth: There should not be more children than can be brought up decently and properly provided for. We have people for ten years who have been dependent upon social agencies, not only for the maintenance of themselves and the children they had years ago but for an increasing number ever since. I maintain that this is immoral in every sense of the word--to have children they cannot take care of and to make their neighbors and others bear the consequences of their acts.
Seventh: I maintain children should not be born until the young couple have, say, two years of married life. I would like to see young people take two or three years to play together, to build up and develop their common interests before parenthood. I believe it is harder today for two young people to become adjusted to each other than it ever was in the past. We imagine they are going to live happy ever after, but we know their problems have just begun. It is not, after all, an easy thing for love to grow into the fine thing which it can be. It is not easy to strengthen the bond of love and to submit to that bond of marriage, unless there is time for mutual adjustment. If couples had two years alone together I maintain there would be more happy homes, fewer divorces and the possibility of the girl developing her womanhood before taking the responsibility of motherhood. We really see very little of the love-life of individuals. They are married--and the next year become parents. The girl goes away on her honeymoon and comes back pregnant, physically and mentally disturbed. The husband has never an opportunity to know her as a woman; he knows her as a girl and then as a mother. I believe it would make for more happy marriages and more permanent ones if the fear of pregnancy could be removed or delayed, and parenthood invited instead of being an unwelcome accident.
There are three groups of methods of preventing conception. The first is continence. The only organized religious body that opposes Birth Control does not condemn continence, but regards it as the only permissible method of birth control. The second is sterilization. The third, mechanical means of preventing conception. In our studies of the past five years we have found that continence cannot be a means of general application. Self-control, or continence, is a matter of one’s evolution. Sterilization is bound to play an important part, especially where there are transmissible diseases. This remedy is largely in the hands of the medical profession.
It is about four years since we had the first birth control clinic in this country. To date, more than ten thousand women, whose histories we have on record, have come to us. Today we can say we know something about birth control. Ten years ago we could not say that. We could only say it had been practiced in Holland and amongst the well-to-do in almost every country, but we had no positive information. We can today say that birth control clinics are doing a splendid thing, not only in giving children a better chance of life but in protecting mothers and reducing the enormous number of abortions. In our records we have 85 percent of the families going upward in the social scale. We know if we can get a woman before she has her fourth child there is every possibility of the husband bettering himself and the children going up the scale, instead of applying for work certificates before the age of fourteen. We know today, on a small scale (for, after all, ten thousand is a small scale) what birth control can do. There are twenty-five clinics in the United States, two in Germany, twenty in England. As to California, there are two in Los Angeles, one in Pasadena.
In the past thirteen years I have received over a million letters, written mostly by women, sometimes on scraps of wrapping paper. They have found my name somewhere and written to beg for information and help. I have recently taken a cross section of these letters and put them in a book called “Motherhood in Bondage.” If, after reading those letters, you still do not believe in birth control, I think such a person would be hopeless of reason. These are mothers who are asking for means to control the size of their families. And what, after all, are they asking for? For the right to live. For the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For the right to know their children and to bring them up decently. For the right also to understand their husbands and to help him, too. These letters tell strange and dramatic stories of life in America, a side of life that is full of suffering and difficulty and that does not reach the public. And have not we paid a tremendous price for their ignorance? Have not these poor mothers paid a price that is staggering? Yet where is the information they need? We are paying for their ignorance in child labor, in infant and maternal mortality, in feeble-mindedness and with the large numbers of the unfit. I think it is time for us to wake up, to make it a right and easy thing for these mothers to obtain information and help of the right kind. We want women to have a chance to develop their own personalities, to rest from incessant child-bearing, to live with the fear of pregnancy removed from marriage. We want children to be born of love and conscious desire and given a heritage of sound bodies and sane minds. We want them to have and to have ourselves bodies that are beautiful, holy, fit instruments for progress towards perfection, temples in which the soul may take its place in the mystery of material being.
Sanger gave this statement to the pressupon arriving in Los Angeles for a one-month speaking tour.
Visiting Los Angeles for the first time since 1916, Margaret Sanger, president of the American Birth Control League, known for her books on the subject, arrived here yesterday on the Union Pacific Los Angeles limited for a month’s stay on the Pacific Coast.
"I am particularly interested in the attitude of Southern California on the subject of birth control," she said at the Biltmore. "When I was here before the very words, birth control, were taboo and were mentioned in whispers. But the movement which we feel is for the good of humanity and American citizenship now is commanding the attention of all classes of people and is soon to be called before Congress. I refer to the fact that while there are twenty-two clinics legally established in the United States the Federal law still makes it unlawful to use the mails to state where these clinics are located. We expect to ask at the next session of Congress than an amendment be passed which will abolish this Federal legal technicality which we feel is blocking a humanitarian movement."
"Please do not misunderstand me; birth control does not mean the resorting to illegal operations and procedure to curtail birth. The public must be educated to the fact that control means supervision of the problems of reproduction along clean, scientific lines in the interest of human welfare. It may mean prevention where the facts justify the adaptation of diet and science to obtain that end but birth control as we are advocating it does not mean violation of existing laws or distortion of nature."
"Could the public know the facts as they exist in New York City among the foreign element where children are being born into families already beyond rational lines of maintenance, the public would understand that the American birth Control League is only endeavoring to minimize poverty and want. The subject is being carried further into all walks of life on the basis that dependable offspring is the very life of the nation and that there are as many reasons why women who want children should have them as there are reasons why women to whom children are an illogical menace should not have them."
"We do not look on the consideration of this all-important subject as a violation of modesty of public decency, but rather as the most important home science of the age in which we live. We feel that conditions have reached a point where in the interest of public welfare the subject should be handled with open frankness demanding the fullest co-operation of citizenship and legislation. To effect this will mean cleanliness in body and soul, curtailment of crime and a higher standard of human life in this nation. I believe that one generation will effect the change from veiled misunderstanding to safe and sane living."
Margaret Sanger will speak at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, tomorrow at 4 p.m. and at the Trinity Auditorium, Los Angeles, December 3. Her latest book, "Motherhood in Bondage" came from the press just a week ago.
Sanger addressed the Friday Morning Club in Los Angeles. Portions of the article not pertaining to the speech were omitted by the MSPP.
Mrs. Margaret Sanger, the luncheon guest at the Friday Morning Club yesterday, spoke frankly and clearly on the once-taboo subject of birth control. It was for her activities in this connection that she has been indicted by the Federal authorities.
Mrs. Sanger said that the knowledge essential to birth control should be spread broadcast among the poorer population and that the laws restricting the dissemination of such knowledge should be repealed as unfair and inimical to the best interests of the nation. Her contention was that through lack of knowledge the women of the poorer classes are hearing cruel and unwarranted burdens and bringing large broods of feeble-minded and otherwise seriously-handicapped children into the world, whom they are unable to support and eventually become a burden on the taxpayers.
Mrs. Sanger insists that the scientists and doctors, the majority of the "great thinkers" are in accord with the doctrine of birth control, and that among those classes where the information is obtainable, immorality is less rife and children better cared for, in that people can then afford to marry younger and avoid the production of a family until they are in a position to take care of them. She has had, she said, indorsements of her propaganda from such men as H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett.
"The women of the working classes seek this knowledge and it is unfair to keep it from them when the higher strata of society, the very ones, in many cases, whose influence keeps the restrictions on the statute books, have long since practiced its advantages," she declared. She cited many cases of women who bear vast broods of children, only to see them die in child-birth or live in feeble health, to whom such knowledge would be an inestimable blessing. The present laws, Mrs. Sanger said, breed an army of harpy abortionists and create an unthinkable state of affairs, which a free dissemination of simple facts would do away with. Women, she maintained, are more than justified in many cases, under so many conditions, in availing themselves of such facts. She had nothing but condemnation for what she insists is a policy of reckless and careless breeding. To this door she laid the responsibility for what she said to be the fact that, in proportion to the population in the United States breeds a few great men. This her hearers considered a weak point in her argument, for, they pointed out, European countries cannot be said to encourage birth-control, but rather to frown upon it even more emphatically than ourselves. They also questioned the accuracy of the comparison.
Mrs. Sanger advocates the distribution of clear, concise pamphlets and clinic lectures for those women unable to read. She mentioned one mining district in which she deliberately violated the law by distributing pamphlets of her own among the miners, who assured her they were disappointed at the small supply which only enabled them to give them to women having more than nine children already.
Sanger spoke on her efforts for birth control," at Denver's Marble Hall on May 28, 1916. For drafts of the texts Sanger used during her American speaking tour in 1916, see "Birth Control (Chicago Address on Women)," "Birth Control and Society," Apr.-June, 1916, “Woman and Birth Control," Apr-July 1916, and "Condemnation is Misunderstanding," Apr.-Jun. 1916.
Margaret Sanger, the "Woman Rebel," took issue with Theodore Roosevelt
Sunday night when she declared, "It is about time the race commits suicide if it can't take any better care of its children than it does now."
She spoke at Marble hall, and declared that 300,000 children die annually from poverty and neglect: that 95 per cent of these come from parents who average nine children, and that over-production is making the working class a race of slaves bound hand and foot by poverty, disease and mental deficiency.
She claims the United States is the only civilized country in the world that has such stringent laws in regard to birth control,
she charged: that the wealthy are able to evade these laws but the poor are told there is no help for them, as "it is against the law to give information
regarding birth control."
She said that in New Zealand and Holland, where such knowledge is freely given, infant mortality is lowest, and the standard of morality is highest.
Mrs. Sanger left Denver Monday morning for Los Angeles. She will return to Denver the last of June.
The Birth Control Movement has two practical objectives. The first is to develop, through scientific research, the most healthful, sanitary, efficient, simple and inexpensive contraceptive methods. The second is to make it possible, through the education of public opinion and the liberalization of antiquated legislation, to convey the knowledge of those methods to all who need it.
This memorandum will deal with the problems of research only. I will briefly outline the need of a more extensive research program, and then I will indicate how in my opinion that program may best be carried out, and what it would probably cost.
All Medical authorities agree that no completely satisfactory contraceptive methods have as yet been devised, and that the ultimate success of the Birth Control movement depends to a large extent on developing, through research, contraceptive methods that will be so simple, so safe, so convenient and so cheap that the popularization of their use among poor and ignorant people will be a comparatively easy matter. Research in this field would be of two sorts: laboratory work, and the collection, correlation and analysis of data.
In this country the only individuals who, to my knowledge, are conducting laboratory work in this field are as follows:
Dr. Guyer and two of his colleagues, at the University of Wisconsin, who are conducting experiments in spermatoxins; Dr. Evans of the University of California, who is at work on the segregation of vitamin E, the elimination of which from the diet may possibly affect fertility, although but little is known about it as yet; Dr. Hooker of the Johns Hopkins University, who has done some experiments with the X-ray in relation to temporary sterilization, but has found that this method is too radical for human application; and Dr. Little, President of the University of Michigan, who has also done experiments with X-ray along the same line, and is positive that this method cannot safely be used.
These men are working independently of each other, and none of them is addressing himself primarily to the task of developing practical contraceptives for public use. For our purposes, therefore, there may be said to be no real laboratory research at present in this country, although it is possible that some of the work described above may ultimately yield practical results of the sort we desire.
So far as I know, there is also no real laboratory research in Europe in this field--with one important exception. At my instigation, Dr. F. A. E. Crew, chief of the Department of Zoology of Edinburgh University, and one of the leading European scientists, has opened a laboratory for contraceptive research, and has brought over from Germany as his assistant Dr. Weisner, a well-known associate of the great Steinach. They have mapped out a three-year program. They will experiment with various serums, glandular preparations, and other spermatoxins, using monkeys, guinea pigs and other animals, and extending their experiments over a number of generations. They are hopeful that many men and women now working in clinics in Scotland and London will co-operate with them in their experiments. Their program, which they have very carefully worked out, is budgeted to cost them approximately $10,000. a year for the three years. I have pledged myself to try to raise half that amount for them in this country.
Altogether this projected work of Dr. Crew and Dr. Weisner is, in my opinion, by all odds the most important research undertaking in our particular field anywhere in the world.
Research along these lines is essential. At present there is no tabulated data on a large enough scale to be conclusive, that shows the actual results of the use of different contraceptives, their successes and failures and their social implications. Here and there scattered material of a limited sort has been published in this country; but as yet we are largely groping in the dark.
Fortunately there is available a volume of data in this country that I believe would prove of the highest importance if it were properly analyzed. I refer to the records of the Clinical Research Department of the American Birth Control League. I will give a brief history of this Department in order to explain the nature of these records.
The Department was organized in 1924 to give Birth Control information to mothers who applied for it, and who came within the provisions of the law, and to study contraceptive methods and related problems. Beginning with a staff of three, consisting of a physician, a Clinical secretary and a social worker, the staff now consists of four doctors (two each day), three nurses, a social worker, and (for Jewish and Polish mothers) an assistant social worker, and a secretary, and in addition, nine directors, of whom five are medical men and four are scientists, and all of whom are actively associated in directing the policies and research work of the Clinic.
Up to very recently the Clinic, which is located at 46 West 15th Street, New York City, has consisted of a large reception room, an adjacent smaller room which is used as a nursery and playground for children whose mothers are being examined, a room where the secretary interviews the patient and notes her history, a consultation room for the physician, and an examining and treatment room. Within the last few months we have added a new floor, which will give us another large reception room, two examining rooms, and an interview room. In spite of this expansion of space, and even if we can obtain the funds to add the necessary doctors, nurses and secretary, our facilities will still be overtaxed, for more and more mothers, many of them in desperate need, are coming to us, and frequently all our available appointments are filled up two weeks in advance. Last year we gave contraceptive advice to 4,521 women; this year the number will be much larger, as every month marks an increase. The figure above does not represent all of the women who applied, for many were turned away because they did not present a sufficient “health reason” to permit contraceptive information to be legally given.
With respect to each mother interviewed (including some of those turned away) a history chart is filled out by the secretary, giving among other things her social history (nationality and religion; husband’s occupation, health, income and habits; her own income, education, intelligence, and so forth) habits; her sex history (age at first pregnancy, number of years married, of children living and dead, of miscarriages and whether accidental, therapeutic or self-induced, the character of her labors, whether contraceptives used and how long, etc., etc.) And her physical condition (including pelvic measurements, etc.)
Each patient is requested to return at the end of six weeks to report her results with the prescribed method, and to be re-examined. Further reports are requested at internals of three months. The social worker and her assistant carefully follows up the return visits of the cases, and whenever possible home visits are made to delinquent patients in an effort to be of further assistance to them and to obtain fuller information as to the results of the advice and methods prescribed.
From all of this follow-up work, we obtain detailed information, which is noted on the charts, as to the relative successes and failures of the various sorts of contraceptives which we prescribe, the effects of their use on the patients’ health and home conditions, and the reasons for their abandonment (husband’s objections, inconvenience, improvement in health, etc.) in those cases where they have ceased to be used.
We now have over ten thousand of these individual history charts, each one of which is a mine of information, and all of which, taken together, if properly correlated and analyzed, would be of inestimable social and scientific value. With our already over-taxed staff we have had neither the time nor the funds to make the necessary analysis. A superficial examination of the charts reveals the significant fact that almost as many Catholic mothers have applied to us as Jewish or Protestant, that over 70% of the families represented earn less than $50. per week, that frequently those with the least incomes have the largest number of children, and that the number of induced abortions among the poorer class of mothers with large families is enormous. In the year 1925, for instance, out of a group of less than 2,000 women, 1,434 induced abortions were admitted, varying from one to as many as forty abortions in one particular case. When we consider that women generally are afraid and reluctant to admit the occurrence of induced abortions, the total given above undoubtedly underestimates the actual number.
But these are only a few of the things we need to know. We need to know the relative efficiency of the various contraceptive methods, and the effects of their use on health, sex relations, and economic status; the relation of the infant death rate to the number of children and of pregnancies; the relation of births and of infant deaths to the size of the family income; the frequency of induced abortions related to economic status, number of children and other factors; the sex history and physical condition of women in relation to the number of their pregnancies, size of their families and so on; the attitudes of husbands to various contraceptive methods and to what extent the husband’s occupation, personal habits, religion, etc. are factors in determining the wife’s condition. These and kindred matters must be made known we can advance much further. I am convinced that a thorough and intelligent analysis of our charts is the most immediately practical step that can be taken in Birth Control research, for I know of no other body of information that contains such important and illuminating personal and social details.
I believe that the proposed analysis, when published, would not only advance the whole science of Birth Control, but would have other indirect results of almost equal importance: (1) It should stimulate the formation of other Clinics. The American Birth Control LeagueAfter long and arduous effort, has succeeded in getting Clinics have been organized in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland, but Their number is still pitifully small and they mark only the beginning of our attempt to have the problems adequately dealt with throughout the country. I believe that the publication of our findings would be of enormous educative value, especially among sociological and medical groups whose support is so necessary to the advance of the movement. (2) It would assist us materially, I think, in making our legislative campaigns more effective, because we would be able to point to a body of facts so large and so striking that no one could explain it away. (3) It would almost certainly lead to a more detailed, careful and uniform system of data-taking and fact-finding on the part of similar clinics and even on the part of doctors. (4) By showing the relative faults and merits of different contraceptives, it would stimulate and guide laboratory research.
The employment of a properly trained secretary to do this work under our supervision, the cost of stenographic assistance, and the publication of the final results, would in my opinion require approximately $5,000 and would probably take from eight to ten months to complete.
Meanwhile the work of the Clinic must be continued and expanded, both for humanitarian reasons and for the added light that it will throw on our problems. I have mentioned the new rooms that we have very recently added to our Clinic. To make the proper use of this new space we shall need two more nurses, four more doctors, and one more secretary. Our present operating costs and our costs as they would be with the expanded staff are as follows:
* Contraceptive materials are sold to patients who can afford them at cost. In many instances the patients cannot afford them and we give them to them. Some patients are able to pay a nominal charge for medical service, and the figure of $500. a month represents the approximate cost of contraceptives less the amounts received from patients in payment thereof and in payment for medical services.
Thus we shall have to add approximately $16,000. more to our annual budget in order to finance the expansion of our facilities. This expense is absolutely necessary unless we are to turn away daily an ever-increasing number of crushed and tragic figures who come to us for the knowledge that is life to them. But, as I have said, the growth of the Clinic is equally significant from the point of view of continued and broadening research, and as it grows and develops two additional things happen:
(1) it becomes ever more important as a model for the organization of other Clinics in other localities, and (2) more and more it attracts the interest and affects the opinion of the medical profession. The Clinic has become increasingly a centre to which physicians from this country and Europe are coming for observation and for instruction in modern contraceptive technique, in which respect the Clinic is helping to supplement the teachings of the medical schools, which pay but scant, if any, attention to the problems of contraception. I do not think I exaggerate when I say that the Clinic is the greatest single stimulus in this country to the awakening of medical opinion and the greatest single source of contraceptive information for the profession. The influence and value of the Clinic along these lines is bound to grow as the Clinic grows and as it plays more and more a significant part in the community.
The most immediately practical and fruitful steps in contraceptive research that I can think of are, as I have tried to show:
1. In laboratory research, the program of Dr. Crew and his assistant, Dr. Weisner, at the Edinburgh University. This is to cost $10,000 a year for three years. I wish to secure for them in this country half of that amount, or $5,000 a year for three years.
1. In fact-finding research, the correlation and analysis of the more than 10,000 personal record charts of the Clinical Research Department of The American Birth Control League. This work, including publication of the results, would cost approximately $5,000 and could be completed, I believe, in eight to ten months.
2. In general research (combining elements of both laboratory and factual research) the program of the Clinic--which, in addition to its value as an organ of research, ministers daily to the needs of suffering and ignorant mothers and also acts as an enormous stimulus in the spread of the Birth Control movement. I have shown that the Clinic’s program of increased usefulness will require, over and above its present budget, some $16,000 a year, the funds for which are not yet in sight.
Believing as I do that hap-hazard, uncontrolled parentage leads directly and inevitably to poverty, over-crowding, delinquency, defectiveness, child labor, infant mortality, international friction and war, and believing further that the development of more perfect contraceptive methods and the better understanding of the various problems of Birth Control are necessary if these evils are to be stamped out, I hope that the program I have outlined in the foregoing pages may be carried out, and that the funds necessary thereto may be furnished. I shall only be too glad to give further details with respect to any of the matters discussed above, and I wish also to add that at any time desired the Clinical Research Department of the American Birth Control League can be separately incorporated, so as to dissociate a legal entity from the League. I refer to this because of the possibility that a donor who was primarily interested in research or medical work might prefer to give to a legal entity whose activities were restricted within these limits.
For a similar version see Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm, Library of Congress, LCM 130:226.
]]>Sanger gave this speech at the Community Church, along with James F. Landis and Clarence R. Skinner. The MSPP editors have omitted questions not addressed to Sanger.
For a similar version see Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm, Library of Congress, LCM 130:226.
It was Victor Hugo who said that there is no force in the world so great as that of an idea whose hour has struck. I believe that the hour for birth control has struck, because there is no other question that has so large a practical significance, which, it seems to me, cuts so deeply into the foundations of social evolution. There is no other question of equal importance that has been left so long in obscurity, and yet I think it is safe to say that there is no other question that has so dramatically arisen upon our horizon of national and international interest as this subject has within the past ten years. Ten years ago it was a Federal offense to discuss the merits of birth control, and to write or to print that discussion and to send it through the United States mails.
This battle for free discussion of birth control has had far better success in its being fought out in the courts rather than in the legislatures. George Bernard Shaw says that this idea is the most revolutionary of the twentieth century; H. G. Wells says that it is the most momentous fact of modern life, and he is inclined to believe that birth control is the intelligence test of modern life.
I believe that this is a very fitting place--in a church--to stand for the right to discuss this great subject. I also believe that with the change of opinion, with the education that is constantly going on in this country, we may yet see the same thing happen that happened to me in Los Angeles a few months ago. I went there to speak, and was met at the station by a large group of camera and newspaper and moving picture men, and also accompanying this group was a group of policewomen. This was not altogether new in my experience, but to my great amazement and surprise one of the policewomen stepped forward and said: "We, policewomen of Los Angeles, extend to you a hearty welcome." That was a new experience in this long, interesting battle for the right to discuss the merits of birth control. I was not quite sure whether that welcome was the spirit of California or whether it was the gentle influence of the women in the police department.
But I arrived back in New York and went to work in the Research Bureau pondering over this great manifestation of intelligence and hospitality. Soon my mind was put at rest, because about four weeks ago, while we were quietly attending to the hundreds of poor, wretched, spiritless women who come to our birth control clinic, we were invaded by seven policemen and two policewomen, who came into our clinic and arrested two of our doctors and three of our nurses. I began to realize that it was not the gentle spirit of the policewomen in the department of California. One of the policewomen had come to us as a decoy patient and said that she was the mother of three children. She was given information, she was treated as all patients are treated, kindly, considerately, and went through the usual routine. She came back again to discuss the merits of the subject in its practical aspect in her particular case, and was again given certain consideration, and then on the third visit she brought her friends, the policewomen and seven policemen.
The doctors were herded into the usual Black Maria, taken to the police station, and treated as common, ordinary lawbreakers, and were about to be finger printed when some of us, knowing something about the offense, stopped that process.
A very great piece of good fortune happened at this time. The policewoman who was conducting the raid did not really know the law herself, and she began to go through the files, our medical records, and helped herself right and left to one hundred and fifty cards that seemed to be easiest for her to take and several other very important histories. The Irish say that it is a poor wind that does not blow good for some one, and this certainly was the wind that blew good for us, because she, in taking these records, attacked and invaded the most precious rights of the medical profession, and this aroused the indignation of the medical men and women of New York. A mass meeting was held; the doctors came to testify in our behalf; and I do not know of any time in the past fifteen years when there has been such indignation and such an aroused interest as this police raid aroused in New York City among all sections of the community--in clubs, women's organizations, men's clubs in Wall Street, churches. Medical meetings were held, protest meetings, and without qualification the expressed indignation was sent to the Police Department, with the result that Grover N. Whalen, the Police Commissioner, apologized to the Academy of Medicine, and as a gesture for good behavior in the future, he demoted the policewoman who conducted the raid. But even better than that, doctors of such distinction as Foster Kennedy, the neurologist, and Frederick Haddon, and Ex-Chief Commissioner of Health, Louis Harris, took the witness stand and testified to our right to establish and run this birth control clinic; and not only that, but they testified that a woman had a right to knowledge of birth control, not only for the cure or prevention of disease but also to space the births in her family. By that testimony of these experts we won more in that great decision than we would win fighting in the legislature. Our case was dismissed by the magistrate. It was impossible for them to do otherwise, by the opinion that was so marvelously expressed in every avenue of thought, liberty and freedom in New York City.
Now, the laws in this country are peculiar. In New York State we have two laws, first Section 1142, which, like your law in Massachusetts, states that no one can give to anyone information to prevent conception. But some one in New York was a little wiser in making laws than you in Massachusetts, and they made another law offsetting the severity of Section 1142, and Section 1145 states that any physician lawfully practicing can give such advice to patients for the cure or prevention of disease. That law was put on the books just a little later than Section 1142, but in all my nursing experience I never found any doctor who interpreted it for himself. To test out this law I had two women, one with a severe transmissible disease, taken to every hospital and dispensary in New York and Brooklyn, and with the exception of one hospital, they were refused advice. They were told that they could come back and be treated for their various ailments, and that in case of pregnancy, there might be an interruption to save their lives, but so far as birth control advice was concerned, this was a Sing Sing offense and they could not give it. That was a challenge for me, for some one in the community to test out that law; and I, in 1916, opened a clinic in a very overcrowded section of Brooklyn. I could not get a doctor to help, but got some nurses, and together we announced that we were going to give all married women advice in regard to conception; we were going to challenge the constitutionality of that law.
We were all arrested and spent one month in jail, but we carried that case to the highest courts, and in that conviction and testing out this law we received from the Court of Appeals a decision that the conviction was sustained because I was not a physician, but that any physician lawfully practicing in New York State had a right to give contraceptive advice under Section 1145; and then there was a labored interpretation and definition of the word "disease." In fact, I think instead of going to a medical dictionary the court went to Webster's and they got a definition of disease which was broader.
When we got that decision it was time to act, and we opened another clinic in 1923. We had a physician in charge. We took only cases for the prevention or cure of disease as interpreted by the court, and we went on increasing our nurses and staff until a few weeks ago. We had been investigated by the Academy of Medicine, by the State Board of Charities, and the City Board of Health and found running in good order and according to the laws, so that you can imagine our surprise and dismay to have the police officials come in there to try to break up this work. I refuse to accept that the police department are the authorities to investigate a medical organization that is conducted by the medical profession.
You in Massachusetts have a law even more vicious than that in New York State, because after all there is a little leeway to our law. The physicians in this state cannot give advice even for transmissible disease, even when the woman is suffering from tuberculosis or heart disease, in which we know that a pregnancy endangers and threatens her life. The best the physician can do is to interrupt her pregnancy and send her back home with a death sentence hanging over her head.
That is what you are standing for in Massachusetts today, and the hands of the medical profession are tied. They are not here to challenge laws, they are here to obey the laws. It is for us as citizens to see that the laws are changed so that they shall have full freedom in doing their work.
In respect to this law Massachusetts is the blackest state in the Union. I believe that all it takes in this state is a handful of courageous citizens to stand behind a birth control clinic. Get your doctor, if he wants to be a martyr, to interpret the law from a medical point of view to stand behind this group, and take it to the highest court, not only in this state but of the United States; and I am perfectly positive as I stand here to-day that you will win, because that is the force of a right idea whose hour has struck. You can no longer deny to a doctor his right to save a woman's life, and information to prevent conception will do that.
In our organization of this clinical research bureau we have had over 13,000 women who have come to us within this period of time. We have more women who come to us to-day than we can possibly take care of. We have the charity associations, the social organizations, doctors and nurses who send to us women who should be taken care of and should be instructed and advised, and we take them. In fact, if we had ten clinics in New York City today they would be filled, and to me that is the marvelous part of this movement today. It is not a movement like others in which you must inject the idea into the minds of the public. This is a movement that is far ahead of the organization to administer to it. Women everywhere in the poor walks of life are asking, begging for information to free them from excessive child bearing; they are asking doctors, midwives, nurses, for advice.
In our federal law we also have a law (Section 211) which will not allow anyone, not even a doctor, to send information through the mails, even to another doctor. He cannot send a book, a pamphlet, anything written or printed, or any material or article designed to prevent conception. And worst of all, we cannot tell you in case there was a clinic or a physician in this state where it might be legal to have information, the federal law will make it a crime, with five years' imprisonment to tell you to go to that doctor or give his name. So we have two things to do, first, change your state law, and then clear up this federal law, which also is injurious to the proper functioning of the medical profession.
Not long ago one of our contributors had deducted his contribution from his income tax. It was challenged by the government which claimed that he had supported an illegal organization. As we were incorporated under the laws of New York State, it was rather a surprise to say that we were illegal, and we were shown a letter which I had written to a woman in Baltimore telling her to go to Johns Hopkins Medical Department where we know physicians do give advice on birth control. It was perfectly legal for the doctor of the state of Maryland to give her advice, but it was illegal for me under the federal law to tell her to go to that hospital and doctor.
We have found in our clinic and in the work we are doing there that it is no longer a question of what birth control is going to do. We know what it will do. We know what it has done in the past five years. We know that it is able and that it is reducing infant and maternal mortality. We have thousands of these women who have come to us as a last chance to save their lives, to whom their physicians have said, "One more pregnancy and I cannot be responsible for your life." And these women are living to-day, and their health is improving; they are living to bring up their three or four children better. Homes have been made happier. We have seen the good results of birth control. We proclaim that in the first place, any many or woman suffering from a transmissible disease, such as syphilis, insanity, or feeble-mindedness, such a couple should not have children. We further say that any mother or woman suffering from heart disease, tuberculosis, etc., should not become a mother until her disease is cured. Third, we say that those parents who already have subnormal children should not have more children. We further say that women should have information to prevent conception in order to space the births of the children, that there should be at least two years, and three years is even better in many cases, to give the woman a chance to recuperate, to regain her health and strength after the ordeal of the birth, to give her a chance to enjoy her motherhood and to prepare for the next one.
Further than that we cannot go. But I maintain that we must change our laws and public opinion so that we may go further, and so that any man or woman who is unable to support two children should not be allowed to have nine or ten. We further say that a young couple starting out their life together in marriage with happiness and hopes of adventure, should not take upon themselves the responsibility of parenthood until they have adjusted their married lives first. We want them to have a year or two just to get acquainted, just to know each other, and after all it is not so easy adjusting themselves in this day. It is a great responsibility, and love is one of those tender plants that has to be nurtured, has to be given sunshine and health in order to strengthen it to grow. What chance have we to strengthen the bonds of marriage when a young couple starts out so gayly and joyously in marriage and finds itself in the condition of parenthood before they have adjusted their lives.
We have never given womanhood a chance. We have given motherhood too many burdens; and I claim it is time for us to speak up for womanhood and to make womanhood something lovely and have it precede motherhood. Womanhood has its best possibility for growth and happiness after marriage. You find a young girl going from girlhood into motherhood without any chance to prepare for motherhood by blossoming out to fulfill her destiny as a mother. Birth control is going to make for happier lives, better lives and better marriages, when women have a chance to adjust themselves to the husband, to the man they love; when there is a chance to think, prepare, enjoy, to build up the cultural side of their lives. When children are coming to them by choice, plan, and not by accident, we find that women not only have their first and second child, but their third and fourth child, and enjoy each one of them in the process. That is what we want in the future. We want children to be conceived in love, born of the parents' conscious desire, and given the heritage of sound bodies and minds. We further want the young to look upon their bodies as holy temples and to make these bodies fit and perfect instruments of the soul, to take their part in the mysteries of material being.
Q. (Mrs. Sanger.) "Tell us something about some of the European countries which have sanctioned birth control, and the results, especially in Holland."
A. In Europe to-day there are only two countries, France and Italy, in which information of birth control cannot be given. England is making tremendous strides. There are already twenty-six clinics there, and a fight is going on to have the government allow information to be given at the maternal centers. The House of Lords went on record with a resolution asking the government to have this happen. Holland is perhaps the inspiration of us all in this movement. Up to 1914 there was the lowest infant mortality in the three cities where this was going on, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague. There was a decreasing birth rate. There was the highest standard of education for children; there was less prostitution, and especially with the native inhabitants, of any country in Europe. I cannot say what has happened since 1914. Holland is a splendid example of what birth control will do when it is properly organized and directed.
Q. "What has the birth control group done to influence physicians to protect these clinics, and also to bring pressure upon legislators?"
A. The best that we could do was to find a physician who was courageous enough to give us two years of his time to go out into the country to address medical societies. That is the way we have been able to get the medical profession and societies to have some understanding of what we are trying to do, and I think we are succeeding.
Q. "What do you find to be the greatest secret source of opposition to your work?"
A. I should say that ignorance was the greatest secret force, but I should say that the Roman Catholic Church was the greatest outward, open force opposed to the birth control movement.
Q. "Can you tell us the information in the pamphlets which were being sold in New York City in the streets in February?"
A. I do not know about any pamphlets which were sold in February. I know that there is the Birth Control Review which is a magazine which is sold at the Grand Central Station and at Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Street. That is a monthly magazine, perfectly proper, with mailing privileges in the United States post office.
Q. "If the law be not enforced, will not the unmarried mother take advantage of that law?"
A. In our experience we have had some unmarried mothers come to us, but they have come to be placed where they could take care of their babies. So far as unmarried women coming to us, we have had a few, perhaps a very small percentage, when they have had a condition of health which would not justify their marriage or pregnancy after marriage. In all of these cases we ask them to bring a letter from their physicians. In many cases the mothers have come with them, and said, "If you give her this treatment we will sanction the marriage." I believe that if birth control clinics are established and properly run it will do away with a great deal of immorality, because it is going to allow young people to be married earlier and to take their time to have children. It will be a factor for morality and not immorality.
Q. "Do you know the size of the families of legislators and judges who oppose this law?"
A. At one time we did take a poll of their families and we found there was a certain percentage of them who were bachelors, and that not over two had more than five children, the others had small families.
Q. "Why can't the state take charge of the larger families in the case of poorer people?"
A. The state is already doing that, as well as private charities and philanthropic societies. That is what we do not want.
Q. "If birth control was practiced many years ago, might not society have been deprived of great individuals, such as Lincoln, Washington, and others?"
A. It is difficult to say, but assuming that we might have been deprived of these great individuals, I think we might also have been deprived of a large group of imbeciles, feeble-minded, and general mental incompetents, and we probably would have more great individuals because they would have had a chance to develop their individuality.
Q. "How much cooperation do you receive from the Protestant clergy?"
A. As individuals, I think a great deal. Beginning with Dean Inge of St. Paul's Cathedral, they have never ceased to stand behind and with us. In the Episcopal Church there has been a fine support, not officially, but from individuals, and also from the Methodists and various others. So far as the Unitarians are concerned, we have had it from the beginning.
Q. "Does not the Catholic Church confuse abortion with conception?"
A. I was under that impression for a long time, but I had it from Cardinal Hayes that they did not. I had a statement which was printed in the New York Times that Cardinal Hayes said that the Catholic Church did not confuse abortion with conception, that it understood well what the birth control movement was trying to do, and that it preferred abortion to birth control, because the soul that is aborted has started its journey to life and is sent back, while the prevention of conception denies that soul the right to start life and is a mortal sin; and it is the right and duty of all of us to make it possible for souls to have the glory of God in Heaven, etc. I asked Cardinal Hayes the question: why then he was living a celibate life and was not doing his duty.
Q. "Don't you think that the hidden hand that instigated the raid on your clinic will not lie quiet but will continue trying to break up your work?"
A. It is very possible they will try it, but we are going to be very alert.
Q. "Will you tell us the physician of Massachusetts who was courageous enough to go about talking on birth control?"
A. Dr. James F. Cooper.
Q. "In your program, would you place restrictions on the productivity of men and women who were perfectly normal and where there was no handicap to the woman having as many children as she pleased?"
A. In regard to a perfectly healthy couple that has adequate means, I would certainly place no restrictions on them. It is a question of what the individuals desire. There is no compulsion on our part where people are able to maintain the children they bring into the world.
"Q. (Professor Landis) " Would it not be better democracy if the ultimate say about a law should rest with the people instead of the legislature>"
A. That is rather hard to answer. Our experience has shown that it is not; we are too large. Our theory is one of representation, but in order for that to be effective it must be real representation and responsibility on the part of those people who represent us, and our responsibility that demands we shall be informed about what happens in our country.
Q.(Mrs. Sanger.) "Doesn't our government know that birth control has been practiced for centuries, and if physicians would wake up couldn't they control the laws better in regard to it?"
A. I had not known that it had been practiced for centuries. There have been infanticide, abortion, etc., but I had not known that the same kind of birth control that we practice has been practiced for centuries.
Q. (Mrs. Sanger.) "Is it true that Dr. Cooper gave birth control information in Boston?"
A. (By Mr. Skinner.) "He said the other night that he had brought some fifteen hundred children of the North End into the world, and that it was there that he gained interest in the question of birth control. I do not know whether he has given definite information in clinics or in his private practice. I can not answer that personally."
(By Mrs. Sanger.) I know he did in his private practice, because in one of the medical societies in Chicago he brought some one hundred or one hundred and fifty cases he had followed.
In February, 1915, when I heard Dr. J. Rutgers at The Hague give his last instructions to one of his maternity nurses, as she left his class fully equipped to open a clinic in one of the outlying districts, I knew that the people of the United States would never be fully aroused to the needs of birth control until such a clinic was also established here. My course of instruction which followed in Holland was taken solely for this purpose, the execution of which seemed to be a thing of years to come.
Upon returning to America in November, 1915, to take up the fight in the Federal Courts, the possibility of opening such a clinic came very suddenly after my case was dismissed on February 18th, 1916, without coming to trial. I was then free to lecture throughout the United States, to tell the people what birth control means to the individual, to the family and to the race. For four months I visited all the large cities to and from the Pacific Coast and was greatly encouraged because of the fact that the idea of disseminating contraceptive information by means of clinics with trained persons in charge was always greeted with the most profound interest. I came to the conclusion that a practical test of the law would have the moral endorsement of all thinking people in this country.
Shortly after this, plans were carefully laid and districts especially chosen to open a clinic in each borough of Greater New York. The Board of Health's report was to be my guide. The idea was to conduct the work where records showed the highest death rate, infant mortality, etc. If perchance we were allowed to remain unmolested, the results would speak for themselves, by comparison, in the next Board of Health report.
For weeks and weeks, I trudged the streets looking for rooms suitable for the purpose. At last I found some on Avenue A, between 21st and 20th Streets, New York City, and another in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and paid a month's rent in advance. This relieved me of all available cash for the time being.
Everything was ready--plans, enthusiasm, nurses, translators, vision, decision--everything, but the finances.
For nearly a week I waited for the call to action. It came one afternoon when five women with babies in their arms called on me. They came from Brownsville. They had left the other children with one of the women in the tenement where they lived, while they came to seek advice. They told of the ravages of infantile paralysis in their district, of the low wages of the men, of the high cost of food. They told how the neighbors talked of the clinic, what a blessing, a godsend, it would be over there.
That night a friend called me on the phone and said fifty dollars had been sent to her from a woman in Los Angeles to give to me to use as I wished. The next day Fania Mindell and I started out to equip the place with chairs, desks, floor covering, curtains, stove, basins, etc. A week later, October 16th, 1917, we opened the doors of the first Birth Control Clinic in America. The opening of these doors was a great social force in the lives of modern womanhood.
There was not a darkened tenement, or a hovel or hut, but was brightened by the knowledge that motherhood can be voluntary, that children need not be born into the world unless they are wanted and a place provided for them.
For the first time women talked openly of this terror of unwanted pregnancy, which had haunted their lives since time immemorial.
From the start the newspapers in glaring headlines, used the words "birth control" and carried to all who read, the message that somewhere in Brooklyn there was a place where contraceptive information could be obtained for all over-burdened mothers who wanted it!
From the first day, the little outer waiting room was crowded. The women came in pairs, with their neighbors, with their married daughters and their husbands. Some came in groups with nursing babies clasped in their arms. Some came from the far end of Long Island, from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. They came from near and from far to learn the "secret" which they said the rich women all possessed and the poor women could not obtain. No unmarried women came--all were mothers, except one woman, married twelve years, but who could not carry a child to full term, and who came for advice. Her physician knew she could not bear a child and yet allowed her to conceive, month after month. Her health had been ruined and she was almost a nervous wreck when she came from Connecticut to seek advice.
Fania Mindell acted as the interpreter and took down the histories of the women as fast as she could get them. We recorded the nationality, the age, the husband's wage, the number of children living, number of children dead, number of miscarriages performed and whether by doctor or midwife, the reason for not desiring more children, whether for health, social or economic reasons.
Ethel Byrne, a trained nurse assisted me in advising and explaining and demonstrating to the women how to prevent conception. As most of the records, so carefully taken, were confiscated by the detectives when they made their arrests, it is difficult to tell exactly how many women came there in those few days to seek advice, but we roughly estimate that between 480 and 500 women's names were placed on the records. Hundreds of letters also poured in each day from all over the United States, telling sad and tragic tales of mothers ready to commit suicide, ready to go to any extreme or torture rather than endure child birth again.
Then one day, while I was absent making preparations for the opening of the Avenue A rooms, a woman came ostensibly to seek advice. She was of Irish type, with detective stamped plainly all over her. She told her story of a large family, a brutal husband and several abortions and received advice from the nurse, like all those before her.
A few days later, the same woman came in charge of a detective squad and arrested Fania Mindell, Ethel Byrne and myself.
Then began months of activities quite beyond description. All the forces of opposition were on hand to malign individuals and to misrepresent the cause. The influence of the Roman Catholic Church was seen everywhere. It was especially seen in the Court's refusal to allow us a jury trial, and in refusing to allow physicians to present such medical testimony as was necessary in challenging the constitutionality of Section 1142 of the Penal Law of the New York State.
Comstock's successor was also present to represent the "Society for the Suppression of Vice," but everywhere, and at every turn, the strongest opposition came from subtle underground workings of that Church which apparently dominates American courts of justice and political life today.
We all spent one night in jail and were allowed out on bail. I returned to the clinic and opened the doors but was re-arrested on the charge of "maintaining a public nuisance." The landlord had a court order to eject me from the premises; but this action was finally dropped.
From October 25, 1916, to June 1, 1917 most of my time was spent in courts and jails and in preparing and collecting facts for the trials and appeals for the higher courts. However, time was found to start The Birth Control Review in February, 1917. There were lectures given in cities, such as Chicago, Rochester, Paterson, Newark, Bridgeport and two to three each week in private homes in New York City. The police of Albany refused to allow a meeting, and in Buffalo too they refused to rent us a hall in which to speak on the subject. Then there was the preparation of a birth control film play, depicting the needs of birth control in American life among the poor. Again the Church exerted its influence openly; the film was forbidden to be shown. Countless hours were given to interviews to reporters from near and far who came to learn the facts. Then came women, old and young, frequently calling on me at seven in the morning; hundreds and hundreds of letters to be answered and phone calls to the amount of 80 to 107 in one day. Often the telephone operator would say, "You have had a hard day, haven't you?"
The greatest interest was stimulated when Mrs. Byrne, indignant at the outrageous sentence imposed on her and the treatment accorded her by the Court of Special Sessions, declared she would protest against her imprisonment by refusing to eat or drink until she was released.
For nearly a week she remained obdurate, and finally to keep her from dying the authorities in charge removed her to the hospital ward where she was forcibly fed. On the eleventh day she was released from the Workhouse, pardoned by Governor Whitman, taken to her home in an ambulance and placed under the care of two doctors and nurses until her health was partly restored.
The week after her release Fania Mindell and I were both found guilty. A fifty-dollar fine was imposed on Miss Mindell and a thirty-days' sentence on Blackwell's Island on me. Both cases were at once appealed. The Court of Appeals reversed the decision in Fania Mindell's case. My case has gone up to the Supreme Court of the United States.
When one sums up the activities of the movement throughout the United States during the year, it is interesting to note that where arrests were made, where sentences were imposed upon advocates, there the movement is now strongest.
Thousands came when the interest was highest. Some came for selfish interests, some to inquire, some to exploit. Those who came to dally in sentimentality soon found themselves face to face with fundamental problems often too big for superficial minds to grasp. Those who came to be thrilled by the excitement of the moment are today still seeking thrills in other movements.
To the women of New York I am grateful, especially to the mothers of Brownsville. Day after day they came to the court and waited patiently for the case to begin. Other duties were put aside while they stood beside us in the fight for birth control, for woman's right of ownership and dominion over her own body.
All together, the year's work can well be considered one of the greatest educational efforts of this generation.